


drums upon a plastic bag

by philthestone



Series: amazing grace [2]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, XOXOXOXO, also amy's older brother julian, knew-each-other-as-kids au still goin strong, special appearance made by luis's old soccer jersey and ... of course ... /todd/
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-07-15 22:39:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7241665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You’ve gotta be a certain age to fall in love?”</p><p>In his periphery, Raymond can see the widening of Jake’s brown eyes, big and sincere to a degree almost comical. His voice is genuinely surprised – as if Amy would be knowledgeable in matters of the heart where he would not. Interesting, considering that Raymond has noticed Jake spends most of his time actually in Amy’s presence telling her all about how much more worldly wise than her he is.</p><p>(Outside of Amy’s presence is another matter entirely; Raymond wonders if perhaps Amy could actually become the president of the world solely from the whole-hearted belief Jake has in her abilities.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	drums upon a plastic bag

**Author's Note:**

> more amazing grace au!!!! todd belongs to @elsaclack, and he's an accountant and collects nifty coins and brushes his hair and is _nothing like jake's dad_ and jake hates him. vehemently, which is a word that jake only learned the other day because amy suggested it to him
> 
> shoot me questions abt this verse if u want, im always ready to cry abt it. also, title's from joanna newsom
> 
> anyhoops, reviews are much loved and cherished!

“Amy Santiago. I am about to ask you the _most_ important question you have _ever_ been asked in your _whole life_.”

“Mmm?”

“If you were a fruit – any fruit at all – what kind would you be?”

The sticky vinyl of the booth’s seating peels away from the skin of Raymond’s hand as he lifts it from its place at his side to rest it against the table. The air is filled with a lulled chatter, the smell of tomato-basil and day-old grease and melting cheese filling his nostrils, and Jake Peralta is looking at the person sitting across from him at the table expectantly.

Amy is concentrating on the lined notebook paper in front of her, already three-quarters full of her neat, tiny-print handwriting, her nose scrunching up as she frowns. She taps her pencil against her mouth twice.

“ _Aaaaaaames_.” Jake repeats himself, shaking the magazine gripped in his small hands in front of him so that the glossy pages make an obnoxious flapping noise. “If you could be _any_ kind of fruit at all –”

Amy looks up from her notebook with a perfectly set expression of Annoyance.

“We have been through this before, Jake. _Cosmo_ self-quizzes are incredibly inaccurate. Maybe if you had a copy of _People_ –”

“ _Amy_ Santiago,” Jake says again, tutting loudly and rolling his eyes. “Don’t you think I’d have brought a _People_ if I could get my hands on one? Darlene’s stash needs replenishing, duh.” He scratches at his nose, distractedly. “Now, if you could be _any_ fruit –”

Amy sets her mouth and looks at the magazine as though it’s personally insulted her grandmother’s baking.

“The _inaccuracy_ –”

“Which is _why_ ,” Jake says loudly – too loudly, for the cramped pizzeria booth (Raymond only just stops himself from wincing) "– I am _asking_ y – ugh, _fine_ , God, you’re no fun,” as Amy once again turns back to her notes, seemingly possessing some kind of unparalleled ability to relegate Jake’s excited voice to background white noise. Raymond opens his mouth, having decided that it is quite possibly his responsibility as the adult in the booth and also an officer of the law to suggest that perhaps Jake get started on his homework – has he even packed his workbook in his backpack? – but he’s interrupted before he can so much as articulate the first vowel.

“Detective Holt,” says Jake in a very serious voice.

“Yes, Jake.”

“If you could be _any_ kind of fruit –”

“Ugh, _FINE_ , I’ll do your dumb fruit quiz!” bursts out Amy, reaching over the table and yanking the battered issue of last month’s _Cosmopolitan_ magazine out of Jake’s hands. She flattens it on the table in front of her, other hand gripping her pencil far too tightly for anyone to operate under the illusion that Jake’s antics haven’t finally gotten to her. In the space in front of them, Jake grins – big and toothy, his braces glinting, as though he ever grins in any other way. Beside Raymond, Amy squares her shoulders primly and slides her notebook a little to the right, clearing her throat. It comes to a stop in front of Raymond, who is sitting beside her.

“Detective Holt,” she starts.

“Yes, Amy,” says Raymond. “I would be glad to read the first draft of your letter. Have Miss Diaz and Miss Linetti contributed all that they feel is necessary?”

Behind her glasses, Amy’s already large dark eyes widen comically.

“ _First draft?_ " Her voice is low and whispered and bordering on scandalized, as though he's just told her a terribly dirty secret. "Detective Holt, this is hardly even _three quarters_ of a draft. This is the vague outline of a possible introduction, and I’ve still got _so_ much formatting to do and my research –”

“How are we s’posed to fit all three binders of research into a two page letter, though?” asks Jake, tapping his fingers against the table beside their now-empty milkshake glasses; a valid question, Raymond thinks, though he is wise enough not to voice this himself.

Exceptionally wise, as Amy huffs in a fashion that Raymond thinks would have been mortally wounding were it directed towards anyone other than Jake (whose grin only grows wider, cheeks dimpling).

“I’ve summarized our research, Jake. Also, the important thing is that we add in that thing about the waste burnage cite that we found today.” Amy’s eyes light up with a kind of excitement that Raymond, over the past few weeks, has come to associate with either extra-credit homework assignments, large words in the dictionary, or possible arguments to help their case with the state senator. Not that it’s a _case_ , no matter what Jake persistently wants to call it – inaccurate use of NYPD vernacular is inexcusable and Raymond will not slip into any such thing – but perhaps there is a certain degree of evidence that must be gathered for the letter that Amy has so painstakingly outlined the possible first outline of an introduction for to have any resounding impact.

“Like the notice from the city board that the school got on Wednesday?”

Amy nods enthusiastically, her glossy ponytail flapping up and down, suspended by the crinkled pink scrunchie that looks to have been carefully twisted several times over on itself to achieve an optimal grip on her hair. “Did you bring it?”

“To clarify,” says Jake. “The one that we totally snuck from the receptionist’s desk like super spies?”

Raymond is not surprised that Amy’s cheeks turn pink; his eyebrows have most certainly shot up on his forehead.

“ _Yes_ ,” she hisses. “Please tell me you brought it, Jake.”

“Don’t worry,” Jake says, though Raymond is not sure at first if he’s addressing Raymond’s raised eyebrows or Amy’s severe look. “It should be somewhere in my bag – and c’mon, sir, it was just lying there. If it were that crazy important, they’d have locked it up in a safe or something.”

“Was there a reason,” says Raymond slowly, “why you were in the principal’s office to begin with?”

Jake waves him off as he reaches for his stained blue backpack. “Rosa almost knocked an uperclassman’s teeth out for trying to take milk money off of a third grader.”

“Show the paper to Detective Holt,” says Amy, her eyebrows creased. “It was vitally important to our case, sir.”

(It appears the inaccurate use of vernacular has spread to even the strongest amongst them. Raymond wonders if her should even bother being severe about this particular thing, anymore.)

In front of them, Jake is digging through his zipped-open backpack, his arm swallowed by the fraying bag nearly up to his armpit.

“Jake,” says Amy, the eyebrow crease deepening. “You didn’t lose it, did you? We could get in so much trouble if we don’t –”

“Chill, Santiago,” Jake tells his, his tongue sticking out between his teeth as he concentrates on his groping. “It’s gotta be in here somewhere – ah, hang on.” Extracting his arm, he grabs the backpack by its bottom straps and upends it onto the table. A random assortment of knickknacks, crumpled wads of paper, candy wrappers and cheap dollar-store pens spill out onto the table, cluttering up the space in front of them; a scratched Rubix cube almost falls into one of the milkshake glasses. Jake’s hand pushes aside an orange and white cartridge with a prescription on the side that Raymond doesn’t recognize, two buttons with psychedelic _Beatles_ designs on them, and a squashed packet of Nerd candies before grabbing a slightly wrinkled piece of paper. He waves it in front of him, grinning once more: triumphant.

“Found it!”

“Oh, thank God,” as she leans over and takes it from him, automatically smoothing it open onto the table in front of them. “Here,” Amy tells Raymond, pointing to the places with signatures and the paragraph in the middle. It’s a notice regarding the burning of city waste at a cite that’s barely a block away from the public school, and Raymond is sure that there must be some kind of regulation in place against children being exposed to something as possibly hazardous as this on a daily basis.

“If we can find records on waste burning policy,” says Amy – like she’s read his thoughts, or perhaps, Raymond thinks, he has read hers – “then we’ve got them.” As though she’s only just realizing the reality of the statement, _we’ve got them_ , she does a little dance in her seat, wriggling happily with widening eyes, and grins across the table. “We’ve _got_ them, Jake! Oh my _gosh!_ " 

“Mr. Minsk won’t yell at you again when you go to complain about the bathrooms!”

"You’ll be able to breathe okay again!”

“There'll be extra credit math stuff for you! So you won't always be bugging _me_ about it - ah, hey, joking! I'm joking!”

He splutters off into giggles as Amy sticks her tongue out at him, but she, too, seems to be having a difficult time injecting any real indignation into her pulled face. There is a vibrant sort of delight that swells in the air between the two children in such a fashion that Raymond realizes he has not experienced from them as of yet. And perhaps they’re overshooting – a brand of excitement that Raymond is slowly coming to understand comes from a concealed desperation that they themselves are not even aware they carry with them – but his eyes take in the open binder full of meticulously photocopied newspaper clippings, the blunted pencil with the chewed-on erased tip, and what he now identifies as the old asthma inhaler lying on the table. 

He thinks that there is a very low chance that anyone has been _got_.

And yet – perhaps they do have a strong case to present, after all.

He says, “I’ll take a look at your introduction,” and pulls Amy’s notebook closer towards him, and then, “do either of you need a ride home?”

“My brother Julian’s gonna pick us up,” Amy tells him as Jake fumbles with the pulpy cardboard packet of Nerds in his hand, attempting to pry it open.

“Hey, didn’t that used to be his shirt?” he asks, grinning at the blue and white jersey that is draped over Amy’s small frame. Amy purses her lips and plucks at the rippling fabric with a fingernail covered in chipped nail polish.

“No, it was Luis’s. It doesn’t fit him anymore so I got it.”

“Rosa’s parents are from Argentina,” Jake tells Raymond, as though the statement is supposed to uncover the mysteries of the world. Amy folds her arms over her chest, not entirely devoid of a self-conscious air, and shrugs.

“It’s not like you weren’t totally into the World Cup last year, too, Jake.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t buy any jerseys. Also, Rosa kept glaring at me until I picked a team, I was _conversed_.”

“ _Coerced_ ,” Amy and Raymond correct at the same time; Amy’s eyes widen and her cheeks darken with another blush, but Jake’s grinning at her, having finally ripped open the Nerds package. 

“Whatever, nerds.” He giggles, shaking the package so that the candies in it make noise; it’s ominously silent, which Raymond thinks is likely a good indicator of how long they’ve been fossilizing in Jake’s backpack, subject to the wear and tear of the elements. “Geddit? _Nerds_ , cause you’re –”

“We get it, Jake,” says Amy, rolling her eyes. It’s a small thing, but Raymond catches the twitch of her lips, pursed tightly together like she’s trying very hard to look unamused to the general public but having a rather difficult time of it. With her thick bangs resting neatly over her eyebrows, the large plastic frames of her glasses and the combination of pink scrunchie and hand-me-down soccer jersey, Raymond thinks that the only explanation for the undeniably professional vibe that Amy Santiago exudes is that she was born a thirty-some year old independent modern woman pursuing her dream career.

And yet, a moment later, Jake turns back to focus on his candy package, fingers digging through the bent-out-of-shape cardboard, and Amy ducks her head down to look at the _Cosmo_ magazine, a dimpling smile tugging at her lips.

Raymond raises an eyebrow and turns his eyes back to the notebook, beginning to scan the cramped handwriting. He can hear Amy make occasional comments on the ridiculousness of the quiz questions, alternating with exasperated exclamations of, “Jake! Stop flicking Nerds at me!” He finds himself incapable of letting their conversation become background noise in his periphery; something about the fact that he is slowly learning that children’s problems are not quite as trivial as he once assumed them to be has him following the ups and downs of their dialogue, becoming too-loud and whispered with every interval as they cycle through topics of conversation. He has the feeling that they keep forgetting that he’s sitting there beside them, so absorbed they are in their stories.

“So,” Raymond hears Jake say. “Did I tell you that I totally caught Gina _kissing_ Daniel Beesley behind the second floor cubbies yesterday?”

“ _OhmyGod_.” Amy’s gasp is low and bordering on what can only be described as scandalized. “He’s a _tenth grader_.”

“Yeah,” Jake mutters, annoyed. “He wasn’t super happy that I saw.”

“Is that why you weren’t wearing pants when Rosa was dragging you to the nurse’s office?”

“Syntax, Santiago, syntax. Focus on the important things, here. Do you still have to wear a blindfold whenever Raphe brings home his girlfriend?”

“First of all,” comes Amy’s voice, just a smidgen louder than before, “the word is _semantics_ , and I know that you know it is because we had that spelling test two days ago and I helped you study and you got an A!” Jake’s mumbled protest is cut off as she continues: “And, second of all, I thought we agreed we weren’t gonna talk about my gross big brothers.”

“We agreed no such thing!” Jake’s voice is gleeful, and as such subject to the slight cracking of pitch that plagues some nearly-thirteen year old boys. “So, spill. Did you catch ‘em making out in the elevator again?”

“Ugh, Jake!”

“You _did!_ Aw, man, Ames! Hey, hey, hey, I bet she’s gonna stick around forever. I bet they’re in loooooooveeeee.”

“Ew, shut up, Raphe’s not _that_ old.”

“You’ve gotta be a certain age to fall in love?”

In his periphery, Raymond can see the widening of Jake’s brown eyes, big and sincere to a degree almost comical. His voice is genuinely surprised – as if Amy would be knowledgeable in matters of the heart where he would not. Interesting, considering that Raymond has noticed Jake spends most of his time actually in Amy’s presence telling her all about how much more worldly wise than her he is.

(Outside of Amy’s presence is another matter entirely; Raymond wonders if perhaps Amy could actually become the president of the world solely from the whole-hearted belief Jake has in her abilities.)

“What! No? I don’t know! I’m just _saying!_ ”

“Ugh, whatever, Santiago.” Jake’s leaning back now, slumped against the back of the booth. “I bet he _is_.”

Amy frowns, and Raymond realizes that she’s noticed him observing the conversation when her posture straightens impulsively.

“Detective Holt,” she says - Jake rolls his eyes, “have _you_ ever been in love?”

Raymond swallows, fingers tightening around the edges of Amy’s notebook. He thinks of the long train rides back and forth and the warmth in his chest whenever Kevin makes a particularly witty pun – something that is always followed by a smile.

“I,” says Raymond carefully, “am not entirely sure.”

“Gina’s Mom says that love is something Hollywood tries to sell you,” Jake tells him, still slumped in his seat.

“But _I_ don’t believe her.” Amy’s voice is suddenly firm, and she’s looking at Jake with a very slight crease between her eyebrows. “ _Papi_ told me that the problem with the way people love is that they’re always scared.”

“ _Scared?_ ” Jake scoffs, and impossibly, slides further down in his seat. Raymond’s hand hovers over the notebook in front of him, momentarily taken aback at the rapidity with which Jake’s buoyant mood has disappeared. “That’s – whatever. Why’d anyone be _scared_ of love?”

“It’s a commitment,” Amy insists, and then, as though suddenly remembering something, closes her mouth before she says anything further. Her fingers twitch against the glossy magazine pages and her brows lower on her forehead, disappearing behind the frame of her glasses. When she speaks next, it’s in a low voice, so quiet that Raymond gets the impression she does not want him to hear her. Quickly, he looks back down at her introduction, and focuses his eyes on a sentence where she’s used a semicolon where it should be a colon.

“… Is Todd still around?”

Perhaps it is because he had never anticipated Jake – with his perpetual bounce and headful of fluffy flyaway curls and too-wide grin, who finds it within himself to make a joke out of nearly everything and anything that he encounters – to ever manage sounding truly disgusted by something. Perhaps that is why Raymond is so taken aback by the bitterness that colours the mumbled, “ _Yeah_ ,” that comes from the boy sitting across from him in the booth, a word saturated with a combination of hurt and annoyance and anger that have all entangled themselves into one soup-pot of emotion – emotion that Raymond has never been particularly adept at analyzing. He cannot imagine what _Todd_ has done to warrant such disdain from someone so small, other than perhaps live up to his incredibly boring name.

“I’m sorry,” says Amy, after a moment’s silence, and Raymond can see Jake shrug, his fingers tracing the design of the star within two blue and white rings on his t-shirt. _Captain America_ , he’d told Raymond two days previous, clothed in the same shirt. The coolest superhero _ever_ , Jake had declared, a smile even wider than usual filling his face, promptly announcing that he was going to lend Raymond one of his comic books so that he could be properly educated.

There is a long pause. Raymond watches the two children out of the corner of his eye – they deserve that much discretion, at least – and he can see Amy chew on her bottom lip, her eyes flicking back down to the table in front of her. And then:

“If I could be any kind of fruit, I’d be a strawberry.”

Almost immediately, Jake is pushing himself back up into a sitting position and leaning over the table.

“What! No _way_. You’re totally a grapefruit.”

“A grapefruit – Jake, you _said_ I got to choose, that’s no fair –”

“No, seriously, c’mon, you’re like sour and sensible and stuff all the time –”

“Grapefruits are _not_ sensible – I – have you ever even _eaten_ a grapefruit in your whole life!”

“Yu-huh!”

“Nuh- _uh!_ I don’t believe you!”

“Yeah, and they taste way lamer than strawberries – ow, hey, Amy!” falling back into his seat and lifting his arms to shield his face – he’s giggling, they both are, and Raymond decides that he’ll have to spend twenty more years around children to ever begin to fully understand them – as Amy grabs another item of stationary – her pencil – and is about let it join the lumpy eraser that just bounced beautifully off of Jake’s forehead. Raymond has a feeling the pencil won’t bounce quite as nicely, so he says, raising his voice just barely,

“Amy, I believe I’ve found a spelling error.”

Which is enough to make her drop her pencil in abject horror and scramble closer to him and scan the notebook page with a look of a woman whose child was just stolen settling onto her eleven-year-old features.

It’s a little less than a half-hour later that Julian arrives, tall and sporting a scruffy beard and somewhere in his twenties, sharing Amy’s dark eyes and sincere smile and carrying a paper bag full of what appears to be cilantro and oranges. Amy jumps from her seat and runs to hug him before remembering that she’s supposed to be maintaining a composed and professional persona and so extracts herself from his arm mid-hug, a gesture that nearly upsets the grocery bag and makes Julian start laughing and poke her in the shoulder. At the table in front of Raymond, Jake is serenely folding what Raymond recognizes as the math worksheet that he’d pulled out of his pocket twenty minutes earlier into what Raymond thinks might – _might_ – be some sort of paper airplane. Amy had spent her time alternating between adding another paragraph to their letter (Jake gave suggestions that ranged from outlandish and ridiculous to marginally less outlandish and ridiculous; the former being ideas that Amy actually made an effort to incorporate into her writing, much to Raymond’s surprise) and helping Jake with his math problems. Raymond watches as the boy adds a final fold to his masterpiece and wonders if maybe the airplane is not Jake’s own unique way of exacting revenge against the piece of paper that, as far as Raymond could tell, had given him nothing but grief the whole past twenty minutes.

(Four times, he had gotten an answer incorrect after miscalculating a simple addition at the beginning of the problem; three times, he noticed only afterwards that he had written a wrong number down completely, and despite his exaggerated groans and terrible math puns, Raymond could tell that he was getting progressively more and more frustrated with himself.

For a girl who looks on the verge of a panic attack each time her own work is just slightly criticized, Amy was markedly patient, content to put her pencil down and politely ask Raymond if he could pause a minute in his editing so that she could answer Jake’s questions.)

Raymond watches Jake glance over at Amy as her brother asks her something in Spanish. Her nose crinkles, and she shoves at his arm, turning back to their table clearly intent on collecting her things. Jake quickly stuffs the paper airplane math into his open backpack and starts swinging his legs underneath the table. Raymond raises his eyebrows; he seems to have been granted the unique honour of being trusted enough not to rat Jake’s defacement of Ms. Ludley’s photocopied worksheets out, and he has to admit that it is … oddly touching.

“C’mon!” Amy declares to Jake, grabbing her own backpack and carefully sliding the half-completed _Cosmo_ quiz into it along with her notebook and pencil. “We’ll drop you off at your Nana’s place on our way home.”

Raymond collects his own things – a fountain pen and his hat, both of them fitting neatly back onto his person – and stands, letting Jake and Amy slide out of the booth. Jake is pushing his various belongings off of the table haphazardly into his backpack (the math worksheet is undoubtedly being crushed), and Amy turns to face Raymond.

“Thank you so much for your help today, sir!” she chirps, practically rising on the tips of her toes, and Raymond – reflexively – feels the corners of his lips twitch.

“It was my pleasure, Miss Santiago,” he tells her. Jake swings his backpack over his shoulder and slings his free arm over Amy’s shoulders, tugging her in the direction of the door.

“So, cool! We’ll see you again next week or something, and Amy can freak out about parentheses more!”

(Amy had, indeed, spent five minutes explaining to Raymond exactly why she had chosen to utilize parentheses in the third sentence of her paragraph, nearly a half hour earlier, after Raymond had attempted to suggest as tactfully as possible that she take them out altogether.)

On impulse, Raymond steps forward. He thinks about what Amy said, earlier: her father’s analysis of love. He looks at Amy extricating herself from under Jake’s arm and poking him in the side, and Jake instead reaching to grab her hand. This time, she doesn’t pull away, but instead swings their arms and smiles at Raymond.

Last week, he distinctly remembers Kevin mentioning that he read comic books as a young child.

“Jake,” says Raymond, swallowing with what he realizes is a touch of hesitation. “I was interested in the offer you made to introduce me to … comics?”

The last word comes out a question, but perhaps it should not have; the slow growth of the sheer delight on Jake’s face does nothing to erase the doubts Raymond has, but he wonders if maybe Jake’s enthusiasm will inspire him.

“I’ll bring you a whole bunch next time!” Jake promises, bouncing slightly on his dirty sneakers so that his curls bob. “You’re gonna love ‘em, Detective Holt, even if you’re all into smart books and stuff they’re _awesome_ – tell him they’re awesome, Amy, c’mon –”

“They’re pretty awesome,” Amy agrees, though not without a small eye roll. “Come on, Peralta, Julian’s gonna kick your butt on the subway if we don’t get going.”

Her hand is still holding his, and she uses it to tug him along with her as she moves to leave, the heavy backpack on her shoulders swinging.

“Goodbye, Detective Holt!”

“Bye, Sal!”

“See you next week!”

“He’s so much better than Todd.”

It’s impossibly quiet and has the absent, distracted quality of a statement spoken to oneself, without being wholly conscious of its implications – but Raymond hears it nonetheless, and on impulse, raises his hand to wave at them as they all but skip out of the pizzeria after Amy’s older brother.

Oddly, he’s looking forward to next week – paper airplanes and fossilized Nerds and parentheses and all.


End file.
